Randa Abdel-Fattah threatens defamation action against South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas | Peter Malinauskas
South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas has received a legal notice from the Palestinian writer and academic at the heart of the Adelaide writers’ week maelstrom.
On Wednesday, lawyers acting on behalf of Randa Abdel-Fattah submitted a formal notice of concern over defamation to the prime minister, arguing that the fallout from the cancellation of the 2026 event, which itself has now been cancelled, is not yet over.
The announcement follows a week of unprecedented turmoil that resulted in the majority of guests scheduled to attend the event withdrawing in protest, the resignation of most of the Adelaide festival board and the resignation of AWW director Louise Adler.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Abdel-Fattah accused the prime minister of making harmful public statements about him and said he refused to be a political punching bag.
“We have never met and he has never attempted to contact me,” she wrote.
On Tuesday he accused Malinauskas of “going further” than his previous statements supporting his exclusion from the festival by linking him to the Bondi atrocity, and allegedly suggesting by analogy that he was an “extreme terrorist sympathiser”.
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When asked at a press conference on Tuesday to justify his public support for Adbel-Fattah’s dismissal, the prime minister used a hypothetical analogy.
“Can you imagine a far-right Zionist entering a mosque in Sydney and killing 15 people?” he said.
“Can you imagine that, as the prime minister of this state, I would actively support a far-right Zionist going to a writers’ week and making hateful speeches against Islamists? Of course I would not support it, but in this case it was the opposite. I think that is a reasonable position for me, I believe that.”
Abdel-Fattah confirmed to the Guardian that he had instructed Michael Bradley of law firm Marque (the lawyer who also acted for pianist Jayson Gillham in the discrimination case against the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) to act on his behalf.
Four members of the festival board, including chairman Tracey Whiting, resigned at an extraordinary board meeting on Saturday. On Sunday, before that information became known, Bradley sent a demand letter to Whiting asking him to produce any statements made by the scholar who played a role in the board’s decision to remove him from the 2026 program.
The Guardian sought comment from the prime minister.
